Something very, very interesting caught my eye in one of today’s blue posts (you know, the one where they nerfed Disc Priests and Buffed Resto Shaman…again). Interesting enough that I thought it deserved its very own quick post and some discussion.

We agree with the sentiment among some players that Restoration druids and Restoration shaman are lacking in the healing cooldown department. The shaman buff and Power Word: Shield adjustment above should bring all healers reasonably close in terms of throughput. The decision on who to bring then might end up being dictated by the strong cooldowns offered by paladins or priests. This isn’t the kind of thing we can address via a hotfix, but it is something we are looking at for the next major content patch.

As always, we appreciate your continued constructive feedback and will do our best to keep you informed of ongoing developments. source

Druids and Shaman have been fighting through several expansions for some form of offensive cooldown to put them on par with Priests and Paladins. And many people have opined on the topic, and offered suggestions hoping that someday this would fall on the ears of a willing Dev who understood the true disadvantage Shaman and Druids faced because they were lacking in this area.

Without much more to go on than what was stated in the post above, exactly what we will be getting remains a complete mystery. A targetable barkskin that would reduce the damage taken by the target has often been the favored hope by many a druid – with some creative thinkers in the community thinking about how it could potentially be tied to ToL to give us something competitive/similar to Power Word: Barrier.

While this seems to be in the very early stages, and no decisions have been made yet, it is absolutely something to be excited about.

If you had a hand in the design, what kind of offensive cooldown would you give to druids? How about Shaman?

Definitely agree shamans and druids need a defensive CD, but I don’t think they need “something like PW:B” – PW:B is the disc equivalent of the healing circles priests, shamans and indeed druids all have.

What they need to give is the equivalent to guardian spirit, pain suppression and whatever is is pallies do that lasts a short time but gives extra protection.

Not Really. If that were the case you wouldn’t see so many disc priests in HM raiding. PW:Barrier is basically like pain suppression for the entire group under it. It is far, far more powerful than efflorescence, healing rain and echoes of light.

PW:B might be overpowered then, but I think it is supposed to be the disc priest “healing circle”. PS. echo of light is the holy priest mastery, not the holy priest circle – that is PW:Sanctuary. I haven’t seen ANY hard mode raiding yet, because aussies are shafted, so wouldn’t know about that🙂

For Shaman Spirit Link is the ideal iconic spell that can be worked in although difficult to implement. Sticking to what already exists in Warcraft III a Ethereal Form to do something similar to Tree Form. Maybe reduce physical damage increase SpellPower that would also benefit the Elemental spec which is in need of CDs as well. And finally and least interesting idea or another Elemental Totem for Water that summons and AOE Healing Elemental for a few minutes.

I’m sick and tired of hybrids wanting as many healing tools as priests. Priests have two healing trees, they should be the dominant healing class. As of such, I’m also tired of shadow priests complaining about not having the tools a mage has. We need more class defining and less balancing. On that note, I wish priests could carry a shield…

Priest, because it can only fill two roles unlike the other classes. Shaman can fill melee/ranged/healing Paladin can fill Tank/Melee/Healing Druid can fill Melee/Ranged/Tank/Healing

In my opinion, the lack of utility for priests should be compensated, not taken away. They should top healing charts on a regular basis. You should be able to take a player with equal skill for every class and have that player heal better with priests. It’s just my personal opinion.

I’m a holy priest myself and I don’t expect to heal better than other classes. I don’t believe we should be “dominant” at all. If that were the case, everyone would demand healers all be priests and that would be really boring.

I think people are a bit too focused on equality between healing classes, and they should be focused on equity instead. We don’t have to all have the same tools. Only druids can battle res, and I’m perfectly ok with that.

I play a resto shaman, and My idea for a cooldown was something where in a spell you combine the power of all 4 totems into one awesome totem that does something ridiculous to whoevers in range of it. I’d call it totem pole.

Links the casters spirit with the target, combining their health pools for 10 seconds. While linked, any damage or healing done is applied to the combined health pool. If the combined health pool reaches 0, both die. When this effect expires, the remaining health is split evenly between the Shaman and the target.

Kind of a combination of Last Stand and Lay on Hands, but thematically consistent with Shamans.

In order to balance this, it may need to have an increased healing effect as well.

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